Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/306



The eighteenth century was a period of recovery for Italy. The ancient lustre of literature, indeed, was but feebly rekindled; and fine art, with the exception of music, which rose to unexampled heights, sank lower and lower. But an invigorating breath pervaded the nation; men wrote and thought in comparative freedom; and if pedantry and frivolity still reigned in many quarters, the sway of outrageous bad taste had departed. Political and spiritual tyranny were still enthroned, and religion and politics could only be handled with great caution; yet reform was more hardy and oppression less assured than of yore. Italy rose slowly from her abasement, like a trodden flower resuming ils erect attitude, bruised but not crushed, feeble but not inanimate, obeying a natural impulse by which she could not fail to right herself in time.

The chief cause of Italian regeneratiojj so far as peculiar to the country, and unconnected with that general movement towards liberty and toleration which, originating in England, was gradually transforming Europe, was the disappearance of the Spanish dominion, which had for two centuries inflicted every political and spiritual evil upon Italy without conferring a single benefit in return. A Spanish dynasty did, indeed, in 1734 Rh